


The Failures of Chivalry

by Benzaiten (DaughterOfTheWest)



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: AU, Afemgers, Angst, Avengers - Freeform, Gen, Genderbending, Oneshot, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 08:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterOfTheWest/pseuds/Benzaiten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oneshot-- Rule 63/Genderbent AU: Stella Rogers (Captain America) reflects on the moment that she finally realized that the world had moved on without her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Failures of Chivalry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Suzelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzelle/gifts), [mizbingley](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mizbingley).



> This little oneshot was inspired by my research of Rule 63/Genderbent Captain America cosplays-- I was thinking about how Cap's story/experiences would be different if he was a woman, and it felt like a really compelling character that was worth writing about! 
> 
> Depending on what people think about this oneshot, I would love to do similar things for Tony "Toni" Stark, Bruce "Brooke" Banner, Natasha "Nathaniel" Romanov (the Black Widower), etc., maybe even a full-blown story with a rule-63 Avengers AU.
> 
> Enjoy!

The last time a man opened the door for me, I buried my objections under a polite smile and said nothing but a quiet ‘thank you’. 

The last time a man opened the door for me, he had said: ”You may be Captain America, ma’am, but you’re still a lady and deserve to be treated as such”. 

The last time a man opened the door for me was in 1945. FDR was president and kids were listening to jazz and I was 25 years old. The only part of 1945 that's still true is my age.

The realization hit like a ten-ton tank two days after I woke from the Long Sleep. Ms. Fury had called me in to come and see her in her office, and I didn’t have much of a choice but to oblige, seeing as I was marooned in a future that I knew next to nothing about. The clock struck 1300. On the dot, a suit-clad SHIELD agent had knocked on the door with metronome precision like he was keeping time on it himself.

“Come in,” I marked my page and placed the copy of _A Farewell to Arms_ gently on the bedside table of the decidedly-not 1945 “hospital room”. 

“This way please, Miss Rogers,” he replied with all the professionalism in the world, standing in the doorway. There was nothing particularly interesting about his intonation or anything he said to me, or even about the formality that SHIELD apparently required of their employees (I can’t say that the military had been much better), but I remember this moment with absolute clarity like he’d walked in with the cure for whatever fever dream I had convinced myself I was having. I remember this moment because I watched as the agent slipped his hand around the doorknob, held it tightly, and swept his other arm out into the hall in a gesture that I knew with all-too-much intimacy. It was a gesture that made my gut knot and made my mouth taste like a dull pang of metallic disappointment, but also made a warm mote of mournful memories flutter somewhere in my chest, because that was the moment that I really, _really_ knew: The last time someone opened a door for me was _seventy years ago._

Time has weight, has mass. It sits on your limbs and in the creases of your face and hangs from your earlobes so that you age as you move through it. It bends your spine and gnarls your hands, thins your bones and clouds your vision with smoky cataracts. Time is supposed to sit with you, like how books gather dust and smell over years of degradation. Time is supposed to do a lot of things; but in that moment, I felt smaller, more insignificant than I had ever felt in my life. Staring down the military examiner and hearing the words “We can’t let you fight, you’re a _woman_ ” for the seventeenth time in a row hadn’t felt quite as much like rejection as this. Time had not cared to settle over me. I was invisible and intangible—a ghost; time passed me by and now I was facing the consequences.

Peter Carter had already died peacefully in his sleep in his home in London. He had a wife, three children, and six grandchildren. I was eight years late to the funeral, and seventy years late to our first date.

**Author's Note:**

> I've decided that Cap is a big fan of Hemingway in my Headcannon.
> 
> If you liked this, please review or leave kudos or something to let me know! If you didn't, please review anyway and give me your constructive criticisms. :) 
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> ~Benzaiten


End file.
